(CNN) — The family of a British teenager killed in a road crash allegedly involving the wife of a U.S. diplomat say President Trump “dropped a bombshell” on them when they went to the White House to seek his intervention in the case.
The family of Harry Dunn thought the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting was a discussion of diplomatic immunity — but the president surprised them by saying that the diplomat’s wife was in the building and waiting to see them. “I think the family feel a little bit ambushed, to say the least,” said a spokesman for the family.
They declined to see the woman, Anne Sacoolas, who had fled Britain despite assuring police she would remain there after the fatal crash.
Harry Dunn, 19, was riding his motorcycle on August 27 when he was struck, allegedly by a Volvo being driven on the wrong side of the road by Sacoolas. The accident occurred near a U.S.-controlled military station where Jonathan Sacoolas worked, outside Croughton, Northamptonshire.
Anne Sacoolas originally cooperated in the case, but then returned to the United States. The Dunn family has appealed for her to return to Britain and have asked Trump to intervene.
Speaking to British TV station Sky News, Harry Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, said Trump told the family during their White House visit that Sacoolas was waiting in another room and was willing to meet them.
Charles said “the bombshell was dropped” shortly after the meeting began. “Anne Sacoolas was in the building and was willing to meet with us,” she told Sky News.
Charles said the family refused the meeting. She said they “would still love to meet with her but it has to be on our terms and on UK soil.”
“So we went round in circles for a few minutes after that,” Charles added.
Radd Seiger, the family’s spokesperson, told the BBC: “I thought we were coming down to have a debate on the diplomatic immunity law, and it soon became clear to us that the real reason for inviting us down was to try and get Charlotte and Mrs Sacoolas in a room together — and then I looked to my side and I saw at least three photographers ready to almost … do a press call,” he said.
Seiger said the family will “determine next steps shortly.”
Under the 1961 Vienna Convention, diplomats and their family members are typically immune from prosecution in their host country.
The U.S. State Department told CNN Saturday that diplomatic immunity is “rarely waived.”
At a press conference last week, Trump called Dunn’s death a “terrible accident.” He went on: “The woman was driving on the wrong side of the road, and that can happen. You know, those are the opposite roads, that happens. I won’t say it ever happened to me, but it did.”
The BBC reported that the president’s briefing notes for that press conference, visible to journalists, advised him: “(If raised) Note, as Secretary Pompeo told Foreign Secretary Raab, that the spouse of the US government employee will not return to the United Kingdom.”
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a letter written to Dunn’s family that Sacoolas’ diplomatic immunity “is no longer pertinent.”
“We have pressed strongly for a waiver of immunity, so that justice can be done. … Whilst the US government has steadfastly declined to give that waiver, that is not the end of the matter,” Raab said in the letter seen by CNN.
The foreign secretary continued that “the UK government’s position is that immunity, and therefore any question of waiver, is no longer relevant in Mrs. Sacoolas’ case, because she has returned home,” he wrote.
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